Blogging isn’t easy! There’s always so much to do, from gathering ideas to drafting content, sharing your content, monitoring your social media, building your tribe, and the list can go on and on and on. Today I’ll share with you just 5 Must-Have Apps for Bloggers. Some of these I’ve been using for a while, others I only recently discovered. But together they make my life as a blogger a whole lot easier, when and where it matters most!
When I first started blogging I never could have imagined just how much would go into blogging. Eventually, like everything else in my life, I turned to apps to help me juggle it all. With over 2 million apps in Apple’s App Store alone, there are endless combinations of apps you can use as a blogger. My iPhone is filled with too many to count!
Off the top of my head, I could probably give you a list of at least 25 apps that I use on a regular basis, on any given day. Many of them you already know. I’m sure because we’ve already mentioned them here at the IBA — Pinterest, Tailwind, Canva, Hootsuite, Buffer, StumbleUpon and I could go on.
However, today I don’t want to overwhelm you! I want us to focus on just 5 must-have apps for bloggers that I’ve found most effective in helping me complete some of my most important tasks, easily, from anywhere, and at any time. Some of these apps you may have never heard of and I can’t completely guarantee that they’ll work for everyone. But they’ve definitely worked for me and you might just discover that they’ll also work for you!
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Are you ready?
Psst! You might want to pin this so you won’t forget to download these apps later!
5 Must-Have Apps for Bloggers
1. OneNote
This is probably the app I use the most! Not only is it downloaded on all my mobile devices, but it also sits on my desktop and I even use the OneNote Google Chrome extension on my browser. OneNote is amazing because it helps me gather my thoughts, organize and plan my content, track projects, keep track of passwords, affiliate links, and so much more.
I just love how OneNote lets me quickly capture any web page and save it for later. I can clip an article, recipe or any product information I really need, easily edit, annotate, and save it. I use OneNote to outline and draft every single one of my blog posts (including this one). I really love that everything is stored in one place and I can access it across devices whenever I’m on the go. Being able to pick up where I left off no matter where I go is necessary! And with OneNote it really doesn’t get much easier than that!
2. Cubes
How many times have you wasted time searching for files you needed from your email only to be sucked into an endless black hole. I no longer waste time or allow myself to get distracted by searching through thousands of emails whenever I need to find an old attachment. Cubes is the simplest way to find files in my email!
The Cubes app lets me work smarter and get more done every day! I can instantly recall any file. See the files I need, when I need them, and then move on to what matters most.
As a blogger Cubes also lets me collect inspiration for my blog posts from anywhere — from my email, the cloud, the web, and social media. With Cubes I can collect photos, documents, PDFs, and links all in one place. Then I just recall them when I’m ready to start writing a blog post.
Here’s how it works: Cubes is an email attachment organizer and more. You just connect your email account/s to instantly see your attachments. The app intelligently organizes all your email attachments by file type, contact, and account.
Then to take it a step further you connect the Cubes app to your Dropbox and Google Drive accounts, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram too. I love that I can pull content from those sources too! I then organize specific attachments and other content into specific cubes (like folders) and makes it so much easier to find what I need when I need it. It’s fantastic, and I highly recommend it!
3. Bloglovin’
This is one I’ve been hearing about for a while now. I really should have started using it a long time ago! I’ve always known that commenting on other peoples’ blogs is a big part of blogging. It’s how you build your community, support your tribe, and get others to support you! However, with kids and a nonstop, hectic schedule I barely have the time to keep up with my own blog, let alone keep up with my blog-friends’ blogs.
It takes so much time to sit down and open up a billion different web pages, read all those blogs, and then write comments. So as much as I wanted to do it, most of the time I just don’t. I never have enough time! It’s something that I’ve really been trying to improve upon for a long time, and now with Bloglovin I can finally say that I’m improving in this area.
Basically, this is how it works: Bloglovin’ is a website and mobile app (of course, I use the mobile app mostly), and you follow the blogs that you like. What’s nice about it is that when you follow them, their new posts pop up on your Bloglovin feed. Super easy!
Bloglovin’ makes commenting SO easy to manage. Whenever I have a few minutes, I open the app, look through my feed, click on a few posts and comment right then and there. It makes it so easy to do several each day rather than 20 in one sitting, which can take hours and I never have the time for.
You can find me on Bloglovin here. Let’s be friends! 🙂
4. CoPromote
Now here’s another app I only recently discovered and already has given me incredible results!
To get started with CoPromote, you simply pick a post from your Tumbler, Twitter or Instagram account, or a video from your YouTube channel that you’d like other people on CoPromote to help you share. CoPromote then matches you with other like-minded people who are most likely to share your content with their own audience.
What’s amazing about CoPromote is that as more and more users share your post, more and more new people see your content — it helps you reach thousands of new potential followers and possibly new customers too. Not to mention that it helps you build a bigger network since you are also sharing other people’s posts, which in turn boosts your own posts’ reach. Can you say game changer?
I would have to spend hours on social media to get the results I see with CoPormote! I simply select a post to boost and CoPromote lets others see my content, and then they can share it too. It’s as easy as that!
Also great is that it helps me find new content to share on my own accounts. And even greater is that it’s exactly the content I want to see, based on the categories I selected. EASY and just right!
To give you a better idea, just take a look at the images below to see what CoPromote has done for my posts in just a short time (I’ve only been using it for just a couple of weeks).
Here are two examples of Tweets that I was able to Boost with CoPromote. Compare the organic numbers (what I would have gotten without CoPromote) to the results titled NEW. Notice the stats in the green too! Those are very exciting for a little blogger like me!
Now let’s look at Instagram — it’s quickly becoming my new favorite social media platform. The problem is, I would love to share more content, other people’s content and for them to share mine too. With CoPromote that’s easy!
I recently Boosted this Instagram post below, and it quickly got re-grammed a couple of times. I feel like none of my content ever gets re-grammed. Then again, it’s never been my focus. But with CoPromote it can be! I can easily get my Instagram content in front of an entirely new audience, a much larger audience than my own! And the fact that I can now find other people’s related content to share on my own account is a big plus!
You can find me on CoPromote here. Let’s help boost each other’s posts! Deal?
5. Twitter Dashboard
Now, I think I may have saved the best for last!
I love Twitter! It’s my favorite social media platform. It’s the one that’s given me the best results in terms of making new connections. It’s also the social media platform I really and truly wish I could spend more time on. Now with Twitter Dashboard I can!
Twitter Dashboard is a new app by Twitter for busy people, most specifically busy business people (like bloggers). This app offers one single place to get everything Twitter related done easily.
I find it so useful that I can create a custom feed to help me stay up to date on what’s being said about me and my blog. The truth is that there might actually be more mentions than those that I’d normally be notified about on Twitter! It’s happened to me where I’ve missed a mention, therefore missed an opportunity to make an immediate connection. And I really don’t want to miss a thing!
With a custom feed, I can get right to the Tweets I want to see first. This helps me better engage my community. After all, Twitter really is all about community engagement! It’s great that besides seeing my usual Twitter feed, I can customize an ‘About You’ feed that directly shows me every single Tweet that makes mention of me/my blog.
Also, I love that Dashboard lets me schedule Tweets to reach my audience when they’re actually online and I’m busy taking care of other things. It’s also nice that I can update my Tweet queue and edit my scheduled Tweets while I’m on the go, right from the app.
But what I think I might appreciate most is the great insights I can easily access. I can view all my recent Tweets under one feed and quickly track each Tweet’s activity. In addition, I can view analytics for Twitter engagement, Tweet impressions, and new followers. It’s so easy, and it’s right there, on my iPhone!
To me, Twitter Dashboard is like having Twitter on steroids because I can do everything I already did on Twitter plus more, easier, and in less time!
The bottom line, these 5 must-have apps for bloggers really do help me be more productive as a blogger! I get so much done in a much smarter way, leaving me more time to get all the rest of the stuff done!
How do you get it all done as a blogger? What tasks are your biggest challenge? What must-have apps for bloggers help you be more time-efficient as a blogger? Share with us in the comments section below so we can all learn together.
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